


See the Light That's Right Before My Eyes

by poisonivory



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Just utterly shameless fluff, M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 07:30:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19389391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisonivory/pseuds/poisonivory
Summary: Crowley blinked. “What?”“I - oh.” Aziraphale seemed to belatedly realize he’d spoken, turning his gaze from the Them and back to Crowley. “I didn’t - that is, you should do as you like, of course, far be it for me to - I wasn’t trying to - ”“Aziraphale.”Aziraphale had gone rather pink. “It’s just, you’ve got such lovely eyes.”





	See the Light That's Right Before My Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted Aziraphale to wax rhapsodic about Crowley's eyes, and this just kind of...happened.
> 
> Title is from "Sunglasses at Night" because I think I'm funny.

This, Crowley thought as the snowball hit him in the face and snapped the bridge of his sunglasses, was why he’d never had children.

Well, he was also incapable of conceiving them, since Satan preferred to retain that prerogative for Himself. And stealing babies, though clearly occasionally practiced by Hell, was largely frowned upon. And he’d never really had any desire to spend time around the sticky little things, though Warlock had been unexpectedly entertaining now and again, and really not all that dreadful to be around when he was asleep.

Which was all distracting him from the issue at hand, which was that Adam had thrown a snowball at him and broken his sunglasses, and didn’t seem the least bit terrified of what Crowley might do in revenge.

“Oh, good shot, Adam!” cried Aziraphale, the traitor.

“Sorry about your specs, Mr. Crowley!” Adam said, and ran off to shove snow down the back of Pepper’s collar like he hadn’t a care in the world. Which, yes, Crowley had done everything in his power to ensure was the case, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be put out about it, did it?

_“Sorry about your specs, Mr. Crowley,”_ Crowley mimicked, but low enough that Adam wouldn’t hear it. Not that he minded mocking an eleven-year-old to his face, of course. He wasn’t too _nice_ for that. He just didn’t feel like it right now.

“Oh, be a good sport, Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “It’s all in good fun.”

“Easy for you to say,” Crowley sniffed. “They’re leaving _you_ alone.”

He still wasn’t sure how Aziraphale had talked him into visiting the Them, but there was a beautiful snowfall in Tadfield - because of course there was - and Crowley had been in the mood for a drive anyway, and suddenly there they were. Adam had suggested a snowball fight, and Aziraphale had quickly volunteered to remain neutral and provide cocoa for the combatants via miracle. Suddenly he was Tadfield’s most precious object, to be guarded even unto death, at least as far as the Them were concerned.

Last Crowley had heard, Heaven frowned on bribery. Maybe this was Aziraphale’s newfound freedom at play.

Crowley hadn’t been nearly so quick with an excuse and suddenly four squeaky-voiced gremlins were pelting him with what felt like the entire combined precipitation of Oxfordshire, while Dog barked its fool head off. He’d borne it all with good enough humor, he felt, until now.

“They’re ganging up on me,” he added, knowing it was pathetic even as he said it.

Aziraphale smiled indulgently. Crowley hated it when Aziraphale smiled indulgently at him, mostly because he didn’t actually hate it at all. “They like you,” he said, turning the smile on the Them, away across the field and now apparently attempting to pack Brian in snow and save him for posterity.

“That’s worse!” Crowley said, appalled. “Children aren’t supposed to _like_ me.”

“My condolences,” Aziraphale said. Crowley had the strong suspicion Aziraphale was attempting not to laugh at him.

“And now I’ve got to go all the way back to the Bentley at the Youngs’ house and get another pair of glasses,” Crowley pouted. He could have miracled a fresh pair into his hand, of course, or even repaired the broken ones, but he wanted Aziraphale to understand the inconvenience he was facing - and anyway it was the spirit of the thing. If Aziraphale was allowed to not want to miracle a stain from his coat, Crowley could want never-broken glasses.

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

Crowley blinked. “What?”

“I - oh.” Aziraphale seemed to belatedly realize he’d spoken, turning his gaze from the Them and back to Crowley. “I didn’t - that is, you should do as you like, of course, far be it for me to - I wasn’t trying to - ”

“Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale had gone rather pink. “It’s just, you’ve got such lovely eyes.”

Sound went a little strange in the field - or at least, Crowley assumed that it must have, because it was the only explanation for what he’d just heard. “Pardon?”

“Well, they’re such a pretty color,” Aziraphale said, hands fluttering like he was trying to take off and had forgotten he had wings. “Such a warm, homey sort of shade. And they sort of...sort of _glow_ sometimes, you know. Depending on the light, and whether you’re happy or rather cranky, and how snakeish you seem to be feeling at the moment, and...I...oh.” He wound down a little anticlimactically. “They’re just...I like them. That’s all.”

Crowley was not often at a loss for words. He had _invented_ the filibuster - or at least taken credit for it, which was much the same thing. Still, he wasn’t quite sure what to say to all...that. “They’re infernal.”

“Yes, well, so are you,” Aziraphale pointed out.

That was infuriatingly reasonable. Crowley scowled at the ground. “They were different,” he said after a moment. “Before.”

“What color were they?” Aziraphale’s voice was soft.

Blue. Not a human sort of blue at all, but the clear blue of a summer sky still touched at the edges by the gauzy pink of dawn. There were no mirrors then, but he had known, just the same. “I don’t remember.”

“Well.” Aziraphale straightened his waistcoat. “As I say. I like them now. And I am a being of _impeccable_ taste.”

“That waistcoat is a hundred and thirty-seven years old.”

“Precisely my point.”

In the distance, Pepper let out a banshee yell and used Wensleydale’s unwilling back as a springboard to launch a surprise attack on Adam. Dog spun madly in a circle before collapsing, exhausted. Brian appeared to have lost both mittens, his hat, and a shoe.

It was not much to pretend to contemplate while actually thinking very hard about something else, but Crowley pretended to focus on the children anyway.

The truth was, Crowley was not _truly_ a six foot man with yellow eyes and odd pupils and a tongue that was sometimes forked, any more than he was _truly_ a snake, or truly anything physical and comprehensible by humans. And Aziraphale was not a man with white blond hair and neatly manicured hands and cheeks that rounded delightfully when he smiled, and Ligur hadn’t actually worn a frog on his head, and Gabriel wasn’t actually a perfectly rectangular slab of dull self-satisfaction.

What they _resembled_ , all of them, was reality’s attempt to embody what they _were_. And when Crowley tried to resemble a human, at least enough to pass amongst them, he was just too damned to keep his pupils round or his canines the correct degree of sharpness.

The reason humans didn’t like his eyes, on the rare occasions that Crowley was both without his glasses and inclined to let humans truly perceive him - as much as they were capable of doing so - was because of what they revealed. The _wrongness_ of them was the wrongness of him.

He didn’t blame them for it. _They_ hadn’t cast him out.

“Some frogs are yellow to warn you they’re poisonous,” he said. Lightly. As if it were just an interesting fact he’d learned on a BBC Wildlife Special and wanted to share.

“And some frogs are yellow to make you _think_ they’re poisonous, but it’s actually just defensive camouflage,” Aziraphale replied. Which was ridiculous, because he didn’t own a television and could not have identified a BBC Wildlife Special if it had accosted him in the street and shaken him down for spare change.

“Well, a...toucan, or, or something, shouldn’t take a chance eating a frog that might be poisonous just to prove a point,” Crowley retorted. Did toucans eat frogs? It didn’t matter.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Aziraphale drew down his hand and extended it to Crowley. There was a pair of sunglasses in it.

Crowley blinked at them. He was doing rather a lot of blinking today, it seemed. All the talk about eyes, most likely.

“They’re your eyes,” Aziraphale said. “You have the right to show them or not. But the children have seen _Death_. They don’t care if your eyes are a little strange. And I…” He lifted his chin a little. “I think your eyes are very nice. I think all of you is very nice. I know you don’t like that word, but I still think it. And I’m honored that you let me see it sometimes - see _them_ sometimes - but as I say. They’re yours to share or not.” He shook the glasses slightly. “I shouldn’t have argued with you about it.”

Crowley took the sunglasses from Aziraphale.

He unfolded the right earpiece. Then the left.

He lifted them to his nose, enough to see the way the world tinted dark through the lenses.

Then he folded them back up and slipped them into his pocket.

Since he wasn’t holding glasses anymore, he reached for Aziraphale’s hand instead. Just for something to do. It was soft and warm in his own, despite the absence of gloves.

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale said. He’d gone pink again, and he was smiling. The wild panic clanging in Crowley’s breast eased, just a little.

“Stuff it, angel,” he said. “Aren’t you meant to be making cocoa?”

Aziraphale’s smile widened. Crowley looked away before he embarrassed himself further.

“Right,” Aziraphale said, and the air filled with the scent of chocolate. He left his hand in Crowley’s, though.

On almost any other day, spontaneously generating hot cocoa would have been the most miraculous thing to happen in Tadfield, former Antichrist or no. As a second place runner-up, Crowley thought, it was still rather nice.

**Author's Note:**

> Crowley is referring specifically to the BBC Wildlife Specials David Tennant narrated because, again, I think I'm funny.
> 
> Come say hi [on tumblr](https://pluckyredhead.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
